Free Renewal 7 - When the Student Is Ready by Jf Perkins Page B

run with some throttle, but it wouldn’t idle at all. Dad proved his mechanical skills again by doing something to the carburetor, something blasphemous from what we could hear, until the car was willing to lump along without someone’s foot on the pedal. The idle was fast enough to make shifting slightly dangerous, as we found out when Arturo used the column shifter.
    Dad drove the tractor, and the rest of us piled into the station wagon. The plan was for us to follow him down the road, watching for falling junk. We hoped nothing fell, because using the horn seemed like a bad idea with our new neighbors wandering around. With his foot planted firmly on the brake, Arturo shifted the lever. The car snagged reverse instantly, and lurched backwards. Then, he passed through neutral and the engine revved hard. He dropped it all the way to low gear and the car lurched in the other direction before he finally released the brake and let the tires spin.
    Meanwhile, we had loaded the hay wagon pointing in the wrong direction. It was obvious now, but somebody should have thought of it earlier. Because the driveway was behind the tractor, and the ground began sloping down to the ice lake ahead, Dad was forced to turn as hard as he could and to drive right through the ashen remains of the Carroll’s house. For some reason, we were all uncomfortable with it.
    By the time he had gotten our tractor moving van lined up with the driveway, we were waiting by the gate. Kirk jumped out and opened it. He waited until Dad made a swaying pass through the snow drifted opening and a wide left turn onto the main road. Then he left the gate open, and jumped back in the car. After the station wagon was on the road, Arturo made him get out and close the gate, to make our departure a little less obvious. Dad was chugging away to the west.
    Arturo had a tough job. The car wanted to go much faster than the tractor, even at idle. He spent most of his time working the brakes and shifting in and out of gear. I was surprised to see that the road had plenty of tire tracks on the icy surface. That was good, according to Arturo. If ours were the only tracks, Eugene could follow us without any thought at all.
    We came to a fork in the road, and Dad took the right hand leg, which was more or less straight ahead. There were fewer tracks in the snow, but enough to cover our retreat. He turned right at the next road, and headed north. The road changed directions several times, but I’m pretty sure we were heading north again when we passed through a big section of woods. The trees loomed close to the road, but without leaves, failed to keep the sunlight from flickering through the branches as we rode by. When the trees gave way to open fields, Dad found a little road, possibly a driveway. He made a tight left turn and followed the tree line until he spotted a likely place to hide and regroup.
    The tractor had no trouble pulling into the trees, but the station wagon almost spun itself into the slight ditch on the edge of the road before Arturo coaxed it across and into the woods. We went as far as we could go, far enough that the naked trees stacked into a thick wall to hide our presence. The chances of being heard by the locals were high, however, and our drivers seemed aware of the problem. They shut down the engines within seconds.  As I sat and listened to the pinging of an abused station wagon, Arturo and Kirk got out of the car. They checked with Dad and headed off in different directions with their rifles.
    Twenty minutes later, Dad came back and said we could get out. The camping equipment was placed carefully on the left-hand side of the wagon. We were able to set up our camp without any extra shuffling of gear. After huddling in a barn all winter, the camp felt very exposed. It wasn’t just the weather, it was the wide open threat that could come from any direction. In the barn, it felt like the bad guys would have to come through the door to get us. As a